Know Your Rose Lingo

To grow roses successfully, you need to know the lingo. These rose terms describe parts of the rose plant, petal forms, color types, and more! Get to know these terms and start sounding like a master gardener:

Bareroot: Sold in winter to early spring while dormant and without soil on their roots.

Bicolor: A two-colored rose, usually with two or more colors on opposites sides of the petals.

Blend: A multicolored rose with two or more colors blending together on both sides of the petals.

Bud: An unopened flower. A bud eye is dormant vegetative growth that forms in the upper angle where a leaf joins a cane.

Bud union: A swollen or knobby area on the lower trunk of a rose plant, usually near the soil surface, where the flowering variety joins the rootstock.

Cane: A structural branch of a rose plant, usually arising from the base of the plant.

Deadhead: To remove spent blossoms from a bush and channel more energy into new flowers.

Double flower: A rose with more than one row of petals.

Hardiness: The capability of a rose to withstand cold temperatures without being killed or injured.

Hip: The seed pod that forms after a rose’s petals fall off. Some may turn bright orange or red and are quite colorful in fall and winter.

Leaflet: A part of a leaf. Rose leaves are usually divided into 5 to 7 leaflets, but some have as many as 19 or as few as 3.

Own-root roses: Roses that grow on their own roots and are not budded onto a separate rootstock.

Reverse: The underside of a rose petal.

Rootstock: The roots onto which a rose variety is budded. A rootstock increases the adaptability of the rose, giving it increased hardiness, vigor, soil tolerance, and other advantages.

Semi-double: A rose having two or three rows of petals.

Single: A rose having a single row of petals.

Sucker: A vigorous cane that arises from the rootstock of a rose. Its leaves look different from the rest of the plant, and you should remove it.

Variety: A specific type of rose. For example, 'Mister Lincoln' is a variety of hybrid tea with fragrant red flowers.